ASOIAF: The Rise of House Ashenblade.

Rickard Weil laughed and flicked his riding crop toward Brienne’s face. ”Make me.” The crop never landed.

Brienne moved the greatsword one-handed for a single violent beat and cut through the leather lash, and the severed end snapped backward and scored Rickard across the cheek. His laughter stopped; Brienne brought the sword back into both hands despite the wound in her left arm.

”A knight’s worth is not his face,” she said. Her voice was hoarse from exertion. ”Nor whether he was born a man or woman. It is what he does with the sword and the oath he claims to carry.”

She remained bloodied and unsteady, but the words came without apology. The men who had spent the last several minutes treating knighthood as a birthright had offered no challenge that required courage from them; they had hired numbers, watched from horseback, and laughed while a wounded opponent was surrounded.

Rickard touched the red mark on his cheek.

”You hide behind hired men and family names,” Brienne continued. ”Do not lecture me about knighthood.” The humiliation landed in front of his friends, and that made it dangerous. Rickard drew his longsword.

The horse gave him height and mobility, but not the skill he imagined it did; his first thrust came too wide at the shoulder, forcing Brienne to parry rather than evade because of the men around them. The greatsword struck his blade hard enough to push his arm outward, and he recovered by circling instead of admitting the impact had surprised him.

”I’ll cut the hand off you and see how well you hold that sword afterward.” He spurred forward, and Brienne met him.

At the same time, several mercenaries rushed FireStorm’s line, whether from loyalty to coin or fear of what Rickard would do if they refused. ”Form!” Wayne shouted, and shields locked.

The first mercenary struck wood and found a spear point coming through the gap beside his blade; he went down. A second tried to circle the edge and met two guards moving together rather than one man turning alone.

Wayne kept his men from chasing the first casualties, and three-man groups covered one another: shield taking the initial blow, spear answering from safety, third man watching the flank. The mercenaries had numbers but no common drill; several tried to attack different points at once and instead gave FireStorm separate, manageable problems.

Within moments, three mercenaries were dead or dying and the rest had remembered that payment was difficult to spend after a spear entered the chest; one man tried to force the center with a chopping blow and struck only shield; the spear behind it drove him back before he could recover. Another circled toward the wagons, found a second three-man group already facing him, and abandoned the attempt.

They backed away, and the duel in the center continued. Rickard had the advantage of horseback and fresher limbs; he used both, striking down toward Brienne’s injured side and forcing her to move more than the greatsword normally required.

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Brienne could not simply close and drag him from the saddle because every attempt to step inside the horse’s turn pulled at the wound along her waist and the deeper cut on her arm; she compensated by attacking the sword and reins rather than the armored body, forcing Rickard to control his horse while defending himself.

Brienne answered with strength, and each time she caught his blade properly, the impact traveled through Rickard’s arm. He began avoiding direct contact and cutting at openings instead; his insults continued with every pass, attempts to make anger replace judgment. They had the opposite effect.

Brienne became quieter; Rickard became sloppier. After several exchanges, she beat his sword far enough aside that he nearly lost it, and his horse shied from the impact, costing him another moment while Brienne recovered her stance. The advantage of height had become a burden because he was now fighting both the woman below him and the animal beneath him.

Panic appeared in his face, and his left hand dropped toward the saddle. The motion was wrong for balance; it went below the line of his sword arm, toward a small dagger mounted where a rider could reach it without looking. Arlan saw the metal clear leather while Brienne’s greatsword was still bound against the longsword.

Arlan saw the dagger before Brienne did; he had stayed outside the duel because Brienne had chosen to answer Rickard herself, and stepping in merely because she was wounded would have turned her stand into another insult. A concealed second weapon changed the terms.

Rickard drew it while his sword occupied her blade and stabbed toward the unarmored gap at her side, and Brienne twisted. The dagger missed the deepest line but cut across her waist; she staggered and went down to one knee again.

Rickard grinned. ”Now die.” He raised the longsword overhead and urged the horse forward.

Brienne looked up; she still had the greatsword in both hands, but the wound, exhaustion, and angle left little room to build power before the descending strike. Arlan moved.

The hand-and-a-half sword cleared its scabbard, and Arlan struck Rickard’s wrist before the downward cut gathered full speed.

He entered from the horse’s left where Rickard’s attention remained fixed on Brienne; the cut was controlled to disable the weapon rather than sever the hand; killing a Caron-connected noble in a forest clearing would create a different political fight before Arlan even knew why these men had attacked Brienne.

The longsword flew into the leaves, and Rickard barely understood what had happened before Arlan’s point rested against his throat.

The horse danced sideways; Rickard froze with one hand still holding the dagger, his eyes moving from the fallen longsword to Arlan’s point as if searching for a version of the last few breaths in which he had not been caught cheating. Around them, even the surviving mercenaries had stopped advancing.

”Drop it.” The dagger fell, and Arlan looked at the blood running from Brienne’s side, then back at Rickard.

”You demanded a duel and drew a second blade from concealment when you started losing. Is that the rule House Weil teaches its sons?” Rickard swallowed against the steel; his companions retreated on their horses. The surviving mercenaries lowered their weapons completely.

Arlan pressed the point just enough to break skin.

”You will answer for attacking Lord Selwyn’s daughter on a public road.” Rickard’s face changed from fear to something almost hopeful as hoofbeats sounded through the forest; many hoofbeats. Torches appeared between the trees behind his companions.

A voice shouted from the road.

”There! Surround them!” Wayne turned FireStorm’s shield line toward the new threat.

Caron soldiers poured into the clearing, and torchlight moved between the pine trunks in a widening line, showing that this was not a handful of riders stumbling onto the dispute but an armed detachment arriving with purpose. Wayne rotated the shield wall without breaking its spacing, placing steel between the newcomers and the wagons while the men nearest Brienne held position.

Another shout followed.

”Lord Elton’s order! Kill Arlan Ashenblade and his men. No survivors!” Rickard smiled despite the sword at his throat, and Arlan did not.